


little beast

by torrentialTriages



Series: feels like we only go backwards [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Backstory, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 08:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10331108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrentialTriages/pseuds/torrentialTriages
Summary: I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.- Richard Siken, Little Beast





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is almost entirely from jacobi's perspective, so of course there will be opinions about the other characters i dont agree with.
> 
> wrote this in three nights

**i.**

Going back to San Francisco is more bearable now that he's coming into the city at Kepler's side. He's sheltered from the things that lurk in the gaps between the neon and the light, the things that whisper over and over to you that you are a part of the dirt, the grime, the endless gray that lingers and washes over you if you stay too long, unable to make anything for yourself. The gray will subsume you. The routine will kill you.

It can't touch him. Some days now since coming to work for Goddard he feels like a young god, untouchable in the night tonight. A monster no salt ring or holy water can keep out.

The streetlamps flicker on the car parked on the side of the overpass. Beside Jacobi, who sits in the mellow light of the passenger seat, cradling his head in his hands, Kepler leans on the car door and carves a nectarine in half with his pocket knife. The way he licks the clear juice off the blade is almost feral. The shadows make him appear a gaunt wraith, vengeful angel with eyes sparkling above a carefully lopsided smile as he offers Jacobi the unpitted half of the fruit through the window.

"Want some?"

"Thank you, sir." The fruit is cool and smooth in his palm. The sweet juice rolls around in Jacobi's mouth, and he thinks of peach schnapps and whiskey as he watches Kepler chew slowly, staring intently into the dark. His hair is lit by the electric light in a fine halo, and his eyes, hooded by darkness, glitter in a way Jacobi has learned to associate with someone getting knifed in the ribs, or shot in the chest, or backhanded hard enough to leave mottled bruises, all with the same glittering eyes and pointed enigmatic smile. He stares at the glimmering black river like it'll give him what he wants. What does he want?

Jacobi wants to be out there in the light with Kepler, but he fears ruining the moment even more.

Kepler stands there for a few more minutes, then abruptly straightens up and walks back around to get in the car. "Alright, it's three minutes to ten. Let's go." He starts the car, and as he pulls into the next lane, his mouth is somewhere between a snarl and a grin. Jacobi thinks they're the same thing for him. "We have revenge to exact."

 

**ii.**

There's talk in mainstream society that you pick partners that remind you of your parents.

Jacobi's father inspires a different kind of fear and obsequity, but with Kepler... he actually wants it. He wants to fear this man, who he walks behind and looks up to more figuratively than he does physically. He wants to have a justifiable reason to be kept in check, Kepler almost pressed against him to supervise him, a hair-trigger temper ready to snap him in half, ready to beat him into compliance. He wants the thrilling jolt of fear in the pit of his belly that comes with hovering around a man who finds the slightest reasons to lash out, that he only tenuously deserves to be hurt for. 

He  _likes_ being on his toes around Kepler. It makes him feel alive, to have to be magnetized to this man's every whim. Kepler is a lion who could snap his spine in his jaws and he would welcome it.

He likes the magnetism. He likes the gravity in Kepler.

 

**iii.**

Marcus Cutter is a slender man in a slender suit and his smile is anything but a word so gentle as slender. He's got big plans, and ever-present big smiles that threaten to swallow one whole instead of comfort or cheer.

Kepler refuses to tell him about anything that isn't directly related to his work, but Jacobi's pieced together from the way Kepler talks about Tiamat, a nondescript mission in the 1970s, with faraway eyes and almost reverence (and Warren Kepler holds no reverence for anything, neither man nor institution nor God, Jacobi has learned this), the way Cutter's brought it up at all, with facial and verbal cues that he and Kepler pass like messages on arrows that Jacobi is caught between, the way he's idly searched for records of the Tiamat mission and brought up absolutely nothing... there's something bigger than his daily life in this intercorporation feud going on here.

He knows this. It's not a surprise. It's just _what_ is happening here that he can't fathom, that he's almost terrified of to think about like one unwilling to contemplate the benthic horrors called deep sea fish.

Cutter reminds him of an anglerfish. All teeth, all sharp edges, always seeming to be restraining himself from lunging jaws-first at the next hapless Goddard employee's throat.

He knows too much. He knows what everyone had for breakfast, he probably knows what happened to the Tiamat mission, but... could he have truly been there? It's been a bone to idly pick with Maxwell, to discuss the limits of human aging, of time travel, and... aliens, if they exist.

Cutter knows everything.

They follow him.

 

**iv.**

Jacobi thinks he's a matter-of-fact drunk. Really, he often crosses the line from fact to opinion so much he's planted firmly into the region of being a very gushy drunk. Maxwell regrets sitting in this bar with him.

"He's hot," murmurs Jacobi, face pressed to the cool counter. "I want to fuck him. So bad."

"That's nice, Daniel." Maxwell is very obviously tuning him out, tracing a finger around the rim of her water glass.

"No... seriously. He's so attractive. And I want to go to town on him, God, I wanna... He's always so composed? And I want to... I want to get a reaction out of him. I want to mess him up and crawl all over him and just turn him into a _mess,_  I want him to lose control and-"

"That's nice, Daniel," repeats Maxwell louder.

"He's just so beautiful I could get lost looking at him, and his eyes are so sexy, you know? I want to... I could drown in them." His tone is almost reverent. "I'd follow him damn near anywhere, Maxwell. It's not just that he's hot as fuck. He knows what he wants, and he's gonna get there. And I'm gonna help him if he lets me."

The bartender passes Maxwell the second glass of water she'd asked for and she shoves it into Jacobi's hands. He nurses it, almost surprised into silence. They sit, and Maxwell pleads to every higher power she could ever put her faith in to keep Jacobi silent or at least have him talk about something drier than how much he wants to bump uglies with Colonel Kepler.

After a moment, choking on his heart: "I want him to want me."

Maxwell, at the end of her tether: "I know, Daniel."

"I want him to ruin me."

"I _know_ , Daniel."

 

**v.**

He realizes he's probably in love with Kepler (probably, _probably_ , he doesn't want to commit words to his feelings even now), but some days it hits him in a titanically terrifying way that makes him start to wheeze with the beginnings of panic. This... this dance they do around each other could be love, in a human, but monsters don't love. Monsters don't feel. Jacobi cannot, will not, and should never love.

Kepler isn't here, is the thing. He can't just barge into his office and demand attention like a cat pawing at the door demanding to be let in while he works out his (he shudders at even thinking the term) emotions, he can only sit in the lab fucking around with the in-progress side projects on his workbench and wait for the Colonel to come back from this supposedly important meeting with Cutter (all meetings with Cutter are _important,_ the word loses meaning around Cutter's sharp edges). And when he will, Jacobi will greet him with as much practiced casual workplace respect as he can feign. He can't help but be paranoid that Cutter's going to insinuate that Jacobi just isn't cutting it, Warren, you'll need to find someone more competent to work with that you won't be so inclined to favor so much, hmm? Cutter's told him the stories, of when Kepler was just starting to be important enough to need a second in command, and Cutter never tells anyone something for no reason. Jacobi's surprised he's lasted as long as all of them put together, and longer.

He's scared of Kepler abandoning him. Of throwing him away when he's grown tired of Jacobi.

There's nothing he can do but put up walls, do his job, and pace around seeing if he can be let in.

Jacobi's doing gun maintenance when the lab door opens. There is something cold and remote in Kepler's eyes, farther than polar hinterland can reach. But at the same time it is decidedly finite, stopping where it starts. It scares him.

"Hey sir," Jacobi salutes, putting down the barrel. Kepler wastes no preamble, his voice a steady bright flame greedily exuding heat. This is the ambition Jacobi and Maxwell chose to follow. They're moths to him, and he knows when he tells them to jump, they will ask how high every time.

"Jacobi. We're going to space. You, me, and Maxwell."

Jacobi pauses. Kepler's eyes are deep obsidian, chipping away at Jacobi as if he can see what lies beneath all that uncarved limestone. Seeing if Jacobi is worthy when he eliminates all the excess shards to discover the core of what makes this man his loyal second in command.

He says nothing that he wants to say. He only nods. "Yes sir."

He wants to be worthy.

 

**vi.**

The contact event grows closer, and so does Kepler's fuse.

He practically _throws_ Jacobi against the wall of his quarters, after the spacewalk, all teeth and lips and nose and hands, a knee shoved bent between Jacobi's thighs, fingers like claws at his wrists, on his waist, everywhere at once, rough and hurried like he wants to tear something out of Jacobi, and he'd better find it before he tears Jacobi apart.

Jacobi's tired too, he's running out of tether, running out of fuse cord on his patience with the Hephaestus crew, he's not an _idiot_ , he and Maxwell are very well sure that the Hephaestus crew hates their (personable, enjoyable, very casual) guts to the star, the Sun, and back. He threads his fingers through Kepler's short hair and tries not to think about Lovelace's lancing eyes that look through him to a brighter future that only involves his remains, or Hilbert's sunken glare, because how can he think about that when Kepler's working his way roughly up Jacobi's neck? His fingers encircle Jacobi's throat, almost fluttering on the now-golden bruises, his nose brushes Jacobi's hair, and his lips are warm and sharp all at once and he hasn't felt this way in fucking _ages_. It's hard to fuck in a spaceship, in a space station, he's vindicated that after all the fuckery they've had to do for the Hephaestus crew, Kepler still wants him.

Jacobi knows it's not really about him. Kepler could have done other things to release his frustrations. But he couldn't ask for any more than this, out of the fear that to want to be closer will push Kepler away forever. He couldn't have to call him Sir without the understood layers underneath the monosyllable. He can't imagine the excruciating torment of isolation from the one person he most desperately needs validation from. He can't fuck this up forever.

So he just cradles Kepler's head and runs his nails lightly down the back of Kepler's flight suit as Kepler sucks new marks along his jaw and tries to lose himself in the sensations for however long this will continue.

All good things come to an end.

 

**vii.**

The brig is torturously lonely. Not even the scent of Kepler's flight jacket, battered through Hell and back, can offset the keening pain in Jacobi's arms, in his chest, in his head, _fuck_ , Maxwell, _fuck_.

Eiffel thinks he can sway Jacobi into repenting for... whatever counts as criminally reprehensible to the Hephaestus crew. He doesn't give a fuck. He became a monster long before he'd heard of the Hephaestus. Eiffel can't do anything to him his goddamn savior complex thinks he can. Eiffel wants repentance. Eiffel wants reasons. Eiffel wants to hear something, anything that'll make him feel better about continuing to slap some sense into him.

Eiffel let Minkowski let Maxwell die.

 _(that's unreasonable, kepler had eiffel tied up, but eiffel's on_ that side _so he might as well have a convenient target to blame when he feels so_ sick _looking at the man who tries to reason with him that he was in the right, that minkowski was in the right_ conceptually, _every time he sees him)_

Jacobi is an irredeemable monster. He cares about this. He wants to be soulless, he doesn't want to be some other human being who feels loss and pain and heartbreak and monsters don't have fucking families to have ripped brutally away from them because of some human's dumbass fucking _mistake_.

He wishes Eiffel would try slapping some sense into him. He'd feel alive.

**Author's Note:**

> [little beast is on pages 6-8.](http://library.globalchalet.net/Authors/Poetry%20Books%20Collection/Richard%20Siken%20-%20Crush%20\(Yale%20Series%20of%20Younger%20Poets\).pdf)


End file.
